This Blog is being maintained by Dr. Kevin C. Desouza. Dr. Desouza is on the faculty of the Information School at the University of Washington. The Blog will be used to provide updates on his current research projects – Leveraging Ideas for Organizational Innovation, and Demystifying the Link between
Innovation and Business Value.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

When you look at Friendster.com or Myspace.com, almost every member has hundreds of "friends." Those friends form an extended social network that aids in connections, knowledge transfer, knowledge growth and knowledge dissemination. In other words, social networks contribute to, assist in and sometimes hinder knowledge management. To manage knowledge, you have to know what people know. But what people know often depends on who they know, and who they interact with regularly. Since knowledge is often socially constructed, particularly in an organizational context, being able to map out who knows what and whom through Social Network Analysis (SNA) greatly aids in knowledge management and HR decisions (Patton, 2006). Harnessing the tool of social networking in business can allow an organization to identify gaps in communication and then to encourage fruitful collaboration between similar groups (Patton, 2006). Problems such as loss of expertise (due to employee attrition or HR decisions), duplicative efforts to address similar problems, disconnected and unproductive individuals and decreased motivation to work can be anticipated and preemptively handled through SNA (Patton, 2006). By tracking collaboration and communication between different individuals, teams, units, branches or offices, management can see the actual information flows in an organization, whether or not that matches organizational charts (Patton, 2006). Furthermore, social network analysis can be made fun and interesting, encouraging cross-organizational collaboration. Even better, that collaboration can be tracked, evaluated and shaped in ways beneficial both to the organization as a whole and for individual employee or team-level development and growth (Patton, 2006).

About Me

Kevin C. Desouza is an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering at the College of Engineering. He founded the Institute for National Security Education and Research, an inter-disciplinary, university-wide initiative, in August 2006 and served as its Director until February 2008. He currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Innovation in Information Management (I3M). He has seven books to his name. His latest book is Managing Knowledge Security: Strategies for Protecting Your Company’s Intellectual Assets (Kogan Page, 2007). In addition, he has published over 100 articles in prestigious practitioner and academic journals. He has received over $1.2 million of research funding from both private and government organizations. Dr. Desouza is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.